Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #287556 in Books
• Published on: 1994-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Shields ( The Stone Diaries , Fiction Forecasts, Dec. 13) delivers a tour de force with these companion novels examining the two halves of one 20-year marriage. Quiltmaker Brenda Bowman leaves her home in a Chicago suburb to attend a crafts convention in Philadelphia. Aware of her lack of independent experience of the world, she is elated by this chance to escape from routine. The convention leaves Brenda wide-eyed with wonder. She is thrilled to share a room with the renowned quilter Verna Glanville, but enters to find Verna in the midst of a sexual encounter. Brenda becomes increasingly intimate with a kind man attending a metallurgists' convention, whose life reveals to her the variety of arrangements people make in their marriages. All of this is set against the background of meetings on crafts: one lecturer, on the Freudian interpretation of common quilting patterns, says the Star of Bethlehem represents "an orgasmic explosion." Back home with their two adolescent children, historian Jack Bowman is struggling with demons. After working for several years on a book about the trading practices of Native Americans, he sees an announcement about a book on the same subject written by an ex-lover. His best--and perhaps only--friend, Bernie Koltz, has been deserted by his wife and shows up to sleep on his couch. Later, a neighbor, an affected drama critic, attempts suicide after reading a scathing review of his performance in an amateur production of Hamlet . Jack is as introspective as Brenda is practical, and were it not for Shields's inventive specificity, their views could serve as textbook illustrations of the differences between male and female thought. Brenda grows at breakneck speed, getting a jolt of reality yet retaining her sweet sense of openness to the world. Shields chooses language carefully. In remembering the one moment in their marriage when she felt a "lapse of love," Brenda reflects that "she had been assailed by a freak visitation, and preserved the knowledge that it could happen again." Jack muses at one point that, just as a written record of events can never express history, "a marriage licence wasn't the history of a marriage." As Shields handily demonstrates here, a marriage is the culmination of a million tiny moments, and she strings them together with intense cumulative power.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Issued here for the first time upon the U.S. publication of Shields's prize-winning The Stone Diaries , this early Eighties chronicle of a marriage is actually two novels in one ("The Wife's Story" and "The Husband's Story") published in a back-to-back format. Over the period of one particularly eventful week, the husband and wife each experience midlife crises. Brenda, a quilt-maker, travels to Philadelphia for a craft convention and a journey of self-discovery. Jack, a historian, who remains behind to look after the children, wrestles with his own set of problems--troubled friends and the long-delayed completion of his book on Great Lakes Indian trading practices. The two stories were originally published as separate novels, and the unique format of the current publication forces the reader to choose whose story to read first. Ultimately, it makes little difference since the parts form such a well-meshed whole that you will leave this couple and their stories with reluctance.
- Barbara Love, St. Lawrence Coll., Kingston, Ontario
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Canadian Shields, whose The Stone Diaries (see below), is being released simultaneously with this short pair of midlife- crisis novels, has become prolific and good enough to earn comparison with Margaret Atwood. Here, the story of a marriage is told in two back-to-back novels, one from the husband's view, the other from the wife's. Jack and Brenda Bowman, 40-somethings who live in the Chicago suburbs, have braided lives, but, in her narrative, Brenda leaves Jack and her two kids to attend a convention for a week with her handmade quilts. The Brenda of old used to be ``smiling and matter- of-fact,'' but now she has ``a restless anger and a sense of undelivered messages.'' Things go wrong fast--dizziness, for starters--and after an affair with an engineer and some sitcom, she returns home and feels, for a moment, ``the Brenda of old,'' ``a self that is curiously, childishly brave.'' Meanwhile, Jack, a historian who believes that ``men spend whole lifetimes preparing answers to certain questions that will never be asked of them,'' deals with the kids, helps old friend Bernie (whose wife leaves him), visits a friend who attempted suicide, and finds that ``the void left by his shattered faith had inexplicably grown.'' Picking up Brenda, he feels ``a sudden buckling of his heart, for already he was sealing this moment in the clean preserving gel of history.'' The idea is a bit gimmicky, but the stories play out well. They're not the equal of The Stone Diaries; still, the husband and wife, baptized by brief separation, meet, literally, in the middle of the book, and that sensation--of matching the physical object of the book to the story--is worth the price of admission. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Should be a classic in the "relationship novel" genre
I'm surprised at the way the Kirkus review above mischaracterizes this wonderful novel. I read the husband's half of the story first, since Shields wrote that one first. The author does a masterful job of not repeating herself at all, amazing considering she's covering the same basic period of time as experienced by two halves of a single marriage (though the wife is away for several days at a conference -- an event that is a delight to read about if you've ever been to a conference yourself). Shields handles the everyday, tiny moments of a family's life with such searing poignancy that I had to stop reading every so often and reflect -- and that is, to me, the sign of a very good piece of literature. I love the way she uses the wife's quilting to explore the creative process (and her writer's block segment, when the husband fiddles away his 'free' day, is priceless and oh-so-true). The marriage feels real, the feelings of the mother for her teen children are absolutely genuine in their crushing intensity and occasional ambivalence, and the resolution of the book is the kind I like best: not neat, not melodramatic, not resolved once and for all, yet leaving you with a sense that you've shared a life and gained something permanent from the experience. Subtle, funny, and though it was first published in the early 80s, this unusual double novel is universal in its themes.

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., author of WRITING IN FLOW

The two sides of each story
In a court of law, the judge and/or the jury listens to the plaintiff and the defendant before making a decision. It is important to listen to both sides of a story to get the real picture of what is going on. Nowhere is this more true that when it comes to man-woman relations.

I love books that have unusual formats. This one immediately caught my eye. I read Brenda's story first, then Jack's. Amazingly enough, after 20 years living together, they are still somewhat strangers to each other, yet they have a fine marriage, with harmony, peace, fulfilling sex, the works. Brenda goes away for one week to a quilters' convention and both she and Jack are presented with itchy temptation. The most entertaining point of the novel for me is their feelings towards the other's creativity. In her absence, Jack meditates about Brenda's quilts and her determination, and feels rather jealous about it. In his absence, Brenda thinks about Jack's book and his writer's block, and feels rather irritated about his sloth. The array of miscellaneous characters are interesting, although some are extremely annoying (the convention organizers, for example). Not a bad novel by an excellent author, who nevertheless has created better works.

Portrait of a Marriage
A story about a short period in a long marriage, Carol Shield's tackles the interior monologues of both husband and wife with a unique style - half the story is the wife's take and the other half the husband's.

It's all those things you think about your partner, but don't say because you truly want to stay together. The "oh, he's doing that again, how embarrassing" sort of interior monologue, but with some nice introspection on the part of each character.

Some slightly funny bits, but more in line with the absurd things that happen in a real life.

All in all, an absorbing read.